One night in Honduras: My journey with Team Canada

Canada's Kevin McKenna (L) and Atiba Hutchinson react after their team's loss against Honduras during their 2014 World Cup qualifying soccer match at the Olimpico stadium in San Pedro Sula October 16, 2012. (REUTERS/Jorge Cabrera)

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Kurtis Larson, Toronto Sun

Jun 19, 2014

, Last Updated: 11:37 PM ET

A group of reporters ate poolside the night before the Insanity in San Pedro Sula.

Along with Canada’s national team, there were four media members tucked safely inside the confines of the Honduran Intercontinental, a hotel seemingly misplaced in one of the most violent cities in the world.

Gunmen guarded the entrance. There were towering walls surrounding the pristine lodging to guard guests against any disturbance.

For Canada’s national team, it would serve as something of a last supper.

During dinner, an official with the Canadian Soccer Association walked over to the media table with a bit of a swagger.

Following a 3-0 trouncing of Cuba in Toronto four days earlier, Canada needed just a draw against Honduras the next day to advance to the final round of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying — something it hadn’t achieved in more than a decade.

The CSA suit, we’ll call him, had been sitting at a table with Canada’s top brass. He was "feeling good" about Canada’s chances, he told us.

Hours later, more CSA staffers were brimming with confidence at the hotel bar. Their booze-fuelled predictions had Canada collecting the needed point the next day.

When they finally got around to asking me, I offered up a more realistic scoreline that night: 2-0 to the Hondurans, who had beaten the mighty Americans at the same venue months earlier.

I was wrong. We were all wrong. We couldn’t have been more wrong.

As Canadian midfielder Julian de Guzman told four reporters after the now-iconic 8-1 loss, he and his teammates "pretty much embarrassed" themselves.

In the biggest match of most of their lives, the Canadians melted in the hot Honduras heat.

"One of the toughest losses I’ve ever had to swallow," Canadian defender Andre Hainault told me. "Not too many days go by that I don’t think about it. It still stings and you lose sleep over it if you think about it too much."

It was over at the half. At 4-0 after 45 minutes, team captain Kevin McKenna told Sportsnet it was about "damage control" coming out of the break.

Instead, things got further out of control at the Estadio Olimpico — on the field and in the stands, where media take in the match with fans.

At 5-0, a plethora of blue-clad Hondurans turned to the "Canadienses" and held up five fingers, while some of them continued to hold up one.

At 6-0, they began to laugh. When Iain Hume pulled one back midway through the second half, the 40,000 Hondurans in attendance provided a brief spell of pity applause.

"The game belongs to the players," then-Canadian head coach Stephen Hart told me. "(My friends asked): ‘How do you go from giving up two goals in seven games to giving up (eight)?’

"I don’t understand it."

It was a missed opportunity for Canada’s men’s national team to finally break into the mainstream. It was, as I said, insane.

It also completely redefined a qualifying campaign that, until the Insanity in San Pedro Sula, was rather impressive.

After breezing past Puerto Rico, St. Lucia and St. Kitts and Nevis in the opening stage, Canada opened the third round of qualifying with a hard-fought 1-0 win in Havana under difficult conditions.

A few days later, Canada was the better team in a goalless draw against Honduras, a match that would come back to bite the Reds in the end.

On Matchday 3, the Canadians beat Panama at BMO Field to send themselves to the top of the group. But a 2-0 setback in Panama City put things into perspective.

At that point, however, Canada still controlled its own destiny.

A big win over Cuba on Matchday 5 set up the aforementioned do-or-die meeting with Honduras on the final day.

It was a game that, instead of being much-anticipated, should have been meaningless. Had Canada finished a plethora of sitters in its opening fixture, the 8-1 loss in Honduras wouldn’t have mattered.

"I went over the statistics," Hart said of Canada’s opening draw against Honduras. "We had 13 chances on goal and they had none … But, you know, that’s a perception."

Now Honduras is in the World Cup, and Canada hasn’t won since.

Insiders aboard Canada’s charter flight out of Honduras that night spoke of five hours of silence, with players staring aimlessly out the window for the duration.

Since then, mainstream media have turned their attention to Canada’s women, completely disregarding the fact there’s a men’s team still competing.

Throughout Canada’s history, generations of players are remembered for the big moments they produced.

In the mid-1980s, it was qualifying for Canada’s first and only World Cup (1986). In 2000, it was winning the CONCACAF Gold Cup.

In 2012, ahead of this summer’s tournament in Brazil, it was a group of Canadian players producing an insane night that nobody could have predicted — and one nobody will forget.

CANADA'S CONCACAF RUN

ROUND 2

Canada 4 St. Lucia 1

Puerto Rico 0 Canada 3

St. Lucia 0 Canada 7

Canada 0 Puerto Rico 0

St. Kitts & Nevis 0 Canada 0

Canada 4 St. Kitts & Nevis 0

Canada advances to third round on 14 points.

ROUND 3

Cuba 0 Canada 1

Canada 0 Honduras 0

Canada 1 Panama 0

Panama 2 Canada 0

Canada 3 Cuba 0

Honduras 8 Canada 1

Panama/Honduras advance on 11 points each.

FINAL ROUND

Order of finish

1. United States, 22 points

2. Costa Rica, 18 points

3. Honduras, 15 points

4. Mexico, 11 points

5. Panama, 8 points

6. Jamaica, 5 points

U.S., Costa Rica, Honduras qualify for World Cup. Mexico advances to World Cup after topping New Zealand in playoff.